Genderless Marriage
The question you will likely be asked on the postal vote is whether any two people are entitled to be married. This does not necessarily mean two men or women because the definition of a person is now redefined in accordance with the recent changes to the Sexual Discrimination Act (2013). Part of the amendments read as follows:
“Subsection 4(1) Insert: Gender identity means the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of a person (whether by way of medical intervention or not), with or without regard to the person’s designated sex at birth. Subsection 4(1) Insert: Intersex status means the status of having physical, hormonal or genetic features that are: (a) neither wholly female nor wholly male; or (b) a combination of female and male; or (c) neither female nor male. Subsection 4(1) (definition of man) Repeal the definition.”
Effectively the Marriage Act (1961) is the final significant piece of legislation that defines the biological sex of a person as either male or female. A ‘yes’ vote will by default support the legal removal of the last meaningfully defined reference to biologically determined genders. Consequently, a change in the Marriage Act by incorporating the words ‘any two people’ and using the Sexual Discrimination Act to interpret the meaning of ‘person’, means it is not about gay marriage per se but a ‘marriage as you make it’, which includes transgender, pansexual, intersex and non-binary. Of course, if we stop for a moment and consider the logical constraints of a genderless marriage society, arguably there are none. What stops any two consenting adult people that are mother and son, father and daughter, sister and brother from their legal right to marry? (Also here). And as polygamous and polyamorous relationships predate same-sex and transgender marriage these would reasonably have to be the next frontier for marriage-rights.
A World Without Gender
Incidentally, many are finally waking up to the calamitous law of unintended consequences – other than to marriage—this will have in rendering the achievements in women’s rights pointless and obsolete, with some academics daring to speak out. On the back of the IOC official endorsement for transgender athletes, schools will also have to deal with girls competing against biological boys identifying as transgender. Confusion also reigns over who qualifies for assistance in women’s domestic violence shelters, welfare assistance, the sharing of public and school bathrooms, indeed every facility and institution previously divided along binary gender lines for the protection, safety and privacy of women will now be discarded as an antiquated idea of the past. In effect, the Marriage Act becomes the coup d'état for the gender theory advocates and the prize is sexual anarchy—the total autonomy of the human body. We can already see the mindboggling 112 genders displayed on Tumblr but theoretically, since identity is a construct of the mind and will, then this could include an exponential number of genders, as unique as every person on the planet. And when that logic has exhausted itself there is even a combination of gender, race and species, hence the newest terms of transracial and transpecies, (also here). Every previous notion of ‘shocking’ is up for grabs. Just read the 2001 article, Heavy Petting, by Professor Peter Singer, co-writer of the 1996 manifesto for the Greens. You get the idea. Yesterday’s taboo is today’s newest sexual liberation project. After all, isn’t that what LGBTIQ activist, Masha Gesson plainly admitted to in 2012? The whole issue is not really about marriage, not even same-sex marriage, but the abolition of marriage and consequently the abolition of gender; a world described by C.S. Lewis where, "In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise". Before you dismiss all this as scare mongering or hyperbole, consider that transgender marriage is now within reach. What comes next can be readily seen in the nations that have had same-sex marriage legalised and are grappling with these same disturbing issues mentioned earlier.
The Origins of Gender Theory
There are two points to understand about the evolution of this movement. First, gender theory was not developed in university Science Departments under a rigid dedication to evidence based studies but within English, Philosophy and Political classes roughly dating back to the late 19th century and early 20th century – A fusion of Freudian social-psychological and Marxist political economic theories. It was within academic circles that the struggle began to deconstruct meaning from observable realities, language, rational thinking and traditions. Pilate’s rhetorical question at Jesus’ trial, “What is truth?” is today epitomised in an entire body of scholastic thought referred to by various names including: Critical Theory, cultural Marxism and Postmodernism. Each makes a claim to everything and nothing all at the same time because it has no end point in pursuit of truth that tells us when we’ve arrived. Secondly, this is not new phenomenon. It’s been tried and tested to varying degrees with devastating social, human and economic consequences, from Russia, Germany and Yugoslavia to Cambodia, North Korea, China and more recently Venezuela. A more detailed list is found here. What these examples underscore is that equality, discrimination and freedom under Marxist practice have meanings and outcomes diametrically opposed to those exercised under traditional Western democratic nations. The vast body of literature and testimonials of those who lived under these crushing regimes helps pull together the common threads between the tactics of the past to our present context. Both the playbook and end game are now clearly recognizable.
Marriage Within the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russia serves as the best illustration of how the failed Marxist experiment unfolded. The Red Revolution aptly describes the beginnings of this bloodstained uprising in 1917. “Blood? Let blood flow like water!,” was the radicals battle cry. And nothing of the ‘old guard’ was spared. The question of how to most effectively and wholly overthrow a society was again found in Karl Marx’s Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto and the Theses on Feuerbach. First among the priorities was to destroy the traditional family (bourgeoisie). This was no easy task within a vast geographical expanse like Russia; largely Christian Orthodox, family centered and agrarian. But only then could the new governing order rise to dominance and become the pseudo ‘Creator, father and provider’ of the people (proletariat). Exorcising God (the ‘opium of the masses’) from the national psyche began with the decree for the separation of church and state. But unlike the established Western view of this idea that constitutionally protected religious freedoms, the communist ideal required the sudden and violent uprooting of Christian influence and presence. This began with a relentless, slanderous propaganda campaign through the State press, followed with the forced seizure of property and a “systematised programme of State sponsored pogroms and genocide against the Russian Orthodox church, clergy, monastics and believers – the people of Russia.” The State, not God, would now determine ‘truth’ and reality. As the grand dream for the new Communist nation was set in a centralised largely industrialised utopia, relocating the farm peasantry would also require another stroke of maniacal maneuvering. Conditions under the feudalist agrarian system were indeed grueling but the slower changes toward industrialisation were also causing social grievances and unrest. Communism positioned itself as the much swifter, unifying force to set the nation on the path to economic equality and social power.
The Liberation of Russia's Women
As women represented half the population, they also became an untapped labour source. “The success of a revolution depends on how much women take part in it,” Vladimir Lenin, declared at the Russian conference of workingwomen in 1918. Lenin was preaching from the writings of Friedrich Engels (Marx’s ally) in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, who proposed placing “the whole female sex back into public industry…” by changing the concept of monogamous marriage as “antagonistic” and “oppressive”, the traditional family would collapse and society remade. In short, women without husbands and children were more easily ‘socialised’. With God, religion and moral law tossed aside, the Russian feminist movement commanded by Alexandra Kollontai could implement the necessary changes to ‘separate kitchen from marriage’ and unshackle wives from ‘slavery’. The entire economic unit based o the family and property rights were altered. In its place, workingwomen would have all their domestic obligations cared for by the State. A series of further decrees abolished the right to inheritance and enabled the forced acquisition of land transferring property to the government for establishing communal institutions: maternity homes, nurseries, kindergartens, schools, communal dining rooms, laundries, mending centres, etc. Effectively, it also turned women and particularly children into instruments of the State as public school and party indoctrination transformed them into government spies reporting on anti revolutionary "hate speech". No doubt to keep women from pining over abandoned husbands and children but devoted to the compulsory “bliss” of industrialised paradise, Kollontai also introduced "erotic friendships" to "function as part of communism by forging bonds of comradely solidarity", aptly referred to as "unions of affection and comradeship." Kollontai later co-drafted the 1918 code in Marriage, the family and guardianship. Among other things it ended the religious sanction of marriage, allowed for civil registration, removed any reference to “illegitimate children” and permitted divorce on demand. Two years later, abortion on demand would follow. All these factors merged to open the floodgates for the first 20th century mass sexual revolution—the predecessor to the modern movement for sexual rights, gender fluidity and self-determination.
The Birth of 'Free Love'
The social catastrophe this unleashed would haunt Russia for generations, as ‘free love’ sought no exclusivity for sexual relationships, including polygamy and polyamory.
"One must live in Russia today, amid the atmosphere of torment, disgust and disillusionment that pervades sex relations, the chaos, uncertainty and tragedy that hover over the Russian family ... Some men have twenty wives, living a week with one, a month with another. They have children with all of them and these children are thrown on the street for lack of support! (There are three hundred thousand bezprizorni or shelterless children in Russia today, who are literally turned out on the streets. They are one of the greatest social dangers of the present time, because they are developing into professional criminals. More than half of them are drug addicts and sex perverts).” More detail can be found here.
In just over a decade the wreckage of the revolution was laid bare—abandoned children, crime, declining birth rates, ravaging wars and collapse of the massive welfare system once again left the nation, particularly women, vulnerable impoverished and thrust back into domestic slavery. A fuller account of this tragic revolutionary experiment can be found here and here. However, to close off this turbulent, horrific chapter of Russian history it is important to stress that objections to the 1918 code mentioned earlier were eerily similar for objections to the ‘yes’ vote today. They included: (1) That it would abolish marriage; (2) Destroy the family; (3) Legalize polygamy and polyandry; and (4) Would ruin the peasants (the working class). While the Marxist ideologues had suffered terrible set backs, they were far from done. The Russian Communist movement would see many more brutal incarnations, particularly with the merciless rule of Stalin. Interestingly, it was this same tyrant who, out of mere practicality for restoring public order, reinstituted monogamous marriage, revoked rights to abortion and divorce on demand.
The Modern Resurgence of the Russian Experiment
Communism always had global aims (also here) and many of the revolutionary proselytes and sympathisers found their way into the great learning centres of the West. But the West’s constitutional principles protecting the dual pillars of freedom of speech and religion as “natural rights endowed by our Creator”, were solid defences against 1917 styled upfront, full-scale revolutions. Instead, Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, advocated “the long march through the institutions”, (deinstitutionalization and Cultural Marxism); a deadly game of strategic patience to infiltrate and wear down Western ideological foundations from the inside out. And when society was sufficiently beaten down morally, socially, militarily, it would at long last mount for a fresh wave of revolutions, and the rise of total State control eventually giving way to a classless, homogeneous Communist people – a new global society. Control through chaos was the maxim.
The Role of the Unions
The movement put a particular focus on public education – the surest method for maximum indoctrination. Yesterday’s graduates are today’s teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, scientists and politicians—the bureaucratic cultural elites. The obvious starting point to organize itself into smaller units of influence and give their cause an air of legitimacy as a people’s movement was through workers unions. Through these it attacked every perceivable failure, grievance and economic ill as the fault of capitalism – the bourgeoisie economic system. This is despite the fact that post WWII many Western nations gradually adopted the communist/socialist principles of collectivization – universal healthcare, education, welfare, appropriation of private property through increased taxation and centralized banking. Unions (and their corollary – faux resistance movements, social justice causes and lobby groups – could organize, infiltrate and mount opposition against every institution. This included the powerful education unions that could select which academic ideas to develop into teaching curriculums and place into every school classroom.
Re-Education of the Masses
Marxist academics embedded the Freud/Marxist/Engels philosophy within the teaching of Critical Theory. As the name suggests, it critically challenges all the main elements of Western culture—Christianity, classical history, capitalism, authority, nuclear family, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual mores, patriotism, nationalism, inheritance, ethnocentrism and conservatism. Philosophy and psychology departments increasingly pushed the need for God to the sidelines, embracing a dominant humanist material worldview. With philosopher Nietzsche announcing ‘God is dead’, faith and religion could be sneered at with the same contempt—dismissed as mental crutches for the deluded, enslaved masses, whilst elevating their own greater ability to accept hard cold ‘truth’ as ‘based upon science’. The materialists would find the scientific raison d'être primarily within the work of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.
Social Darwinism
Numerous ideological branches sprouted from the Darwinian tree despite serious contentions to this theory and attempts to restore discourse of the Christian influence to the origins of modern education including science and philosophy. This new dogma would be clung as devotedly and sacrosanct as any article of faith or doctrine. The door was finally flung wide open for every traditional discipline rooted in western ‘unscientific’ ideas to be toppled. History and literature departments also adopted a dominant materialist position, placing Christianity in the crosshairs. Its former high cultural standing as a force in shaping the emancipation of slavery, preserving Roman and Greek classics and establishing great learning centres, gradually disappeared eventually becoming mere historical footnotes. Consequently, these disciplines became centres for secular, Marxist ‘enculturation’. Students would see ‘evidence’ of a class struggle everywhere – overflowing with oppressive ‘racists’, ‘sexists’, ‘bigots’ and ‘imperialists’. While the genocidal evils spurred on through Social Darwinism that gave rise to Lenin, Stalin, Zedong, Guevara, Chavez, Castro, Pol Pot and others were either ignored, minimized or idolised as symbols of countercultural resistance and popular culture. This goes a long way toward explaining the resurgence of socialism and communism particularly among young adults.
The Sexual Revolution
Of course, all ideas have real world consequences. Social sciences/humanities academics were given a freehand to bring former fringe ideas to the forefront. Social theorists, such as Foucault, rejected the possibility of any ‘absolute’ or ‘transcendental’ conception of truth ‘outside of history’ or any conception of ‘objective’ or ‘necessary’ interests that could ground knowledge, morality or politics. Social engineers could begin reshaping core social structures into a “society without oppression,” starting with sexual liberation where moral relativism would reign supreme. The new mantras of ‘many truths’, ‘your truth isn’t my truth’, ‘My body, my rights’, ‘As long as I’m not hurting anyone’, immobilized mass movements such as the 1960s Sexual Revolution, advancing romanticised visions of a classless, conflict-free world preoccupied with ‘making love not war’ and heightened by drug experimentation inviting everyone ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’. It would particularly captivate educated, middle-class youth and in turn mount increasing challenges to the established middle-class morality starting with the bulwark of the social structure—the nuclear family. Since judicial and governing bodies were also changing to purely secular institutions imbued with the ideas of situational ethics, in turn their judgments would reflect the newer constructs of personal choice, equality and freedom. Unsurprisingly, the 1970s saw the restraints of monogamous marriage dealt a severe blow through no-fault divorce laws and, like Lenin’s Russia, abortion rights followed swiftly. As laws facilitate new societal norms, what becomes legally permissible eventually makes its way into public schools once again beginning with sex education, first pushed locally and then globally through the UN.
Gender Trouble
The next wave of the sexual liberation would see the merging of feminism with gay and queer rights movements, using the proven strategies and language of the civil rights causes. As Matthew Parris observes, “all oppressed minorities [today] are basically on the same side, marching together with the striking miners”. Soon the blurred lines of an ever evolving, polymorphous society would be shifted one step further. Philosopher Judith Butler, a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation and a proclaimed lesbian, in 1990 published the book, Gender Trouble – Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Gender theory gave rise to gender studies, asserting that biological sex is independent of “social gender”. In a confusing narrative, people are both ‘born that way’ and ‘fluid’. Choice is what matters most and gender heternormative stereotypes (assumptions of male and female) removed. This was the crux for the development of the Safe Schools Program, first spuriously introduced in secondary schools on an anti-bullying platform. But its aims are inseparable from ‘same-sex’ marriage—a genderless society.
Safe Schools
While the program has comprehensive aims for children of every age, for now it begins at secondary school. It refers to teenagers as as ‘mature minors’ who not only select their pronoun but can also transition to chosen genders without parental consent. Effectively this is the Marxist principle of family collectivization that makes the child subject to the values and beliefs of government and academics not parents. Meanwhile, kindergartens are supplied with books such as The Gender Fairy purposefully focusing children’s imaginations during their most vulnerable and uncertain phases of development. Feelings, desires, impressions and inner drives are elevated, celebrated and invented in role-play scenarios to ultimately unlock their preferred gender identities. At the policy level, this ideology becomes “Gender Mainstreaming” with deregulation of normative sexual standards enforced on every level of society. Government control over public and private life is massively increased as schools, companies, families, churches, public services all have to be relentlessly reprogrammed and monitored for micro aggressions and discrimination against gender infractions.
The Marriage Debate
Same-sex marriage is simply the final step of the arduous campaign for Marxist deinstutionalisation. David Blankenhorn puts it this way,
"The deep logic of same-sex marriage is clearly consistent with what scholars call deinstitutionalization -- the overturning or weakening of all of the customary forms of marriage, and the dramatic shrinking of marriage's public meaning and institutional authority. Does deinstitutionalization necessarily require gay marriage? Apparently not. For decades heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that front all by themselves. But gay marriage clearly presupposes and reinforces deinstitutionalization."
At long last the dreaded tyranny of statism establishes itself from the prearranged chaos to enforce its new orthodoxy. Or as apologist Ravi Zacharias observes, the transitioning “from a rootless society to a ruthless society”. I’m reminded of the final scene from the dystopian trilogy, The Hunger Games. The Resistance emerges victorious and its chief architect, Plutarch, writes a letter to the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.
"The war is over. We'll enter that sweet period where everyone agrees not to repeat the recent horrors. Of course, we're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a gift for self-destruction. Although, who knows? Maybe this time we’ll learn…”
I hope and pray we will.
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